Dang! I thought the community college was charging $20 for the H1N1 shots they were dispensing today. Barreled in there this afternoon and learned they’re free! Even if you’re not a full-time employee. That’s amazing…GDU never did anything like that.
I had to pay $20 for the regular seasonal flu shot last fall, ’cause Cigna, GDU’s new EPO provider, wouldn’t cover it unless you drove downtown to attend their flu shot clinic. Yeah. Right. My time is worth more than twenty bucks.
Even someone off the street could’ve gotten the shot for free, if they’d known about it…they didn’t ask for ID, and the form you had to fill out was just a disclaimer warning you not to take it if you’re allergic to eggs or have certain ailments.
So that was pretty amazing.
Got another nice deal, though not free, at Safeway yesterday: tough old skirt steaks for $1.77 a pound. Had it ground up into enough hamburger to last Cassie the Corgi for another month or two.
An hour & a half before choir practice: think I’ll grill some of it for myself over some fine mesquite charcoal.
Five-Cent Nickel features a nice guest post by Craig Ford, proprietor of Money Help for Christians. Craig holds forth on ways and places to find a good deal, among them yard sales. Just last night, I was congratulating myself for having found one of my all-time best buys—a deluxe “Rabbit” wine opener that normally sells for as much as a hundred bucks—at an estate sale. I picked it up for five bucks.
Estate sales are different from yard sales in several big ways.
• A true estate sale is organized by professionals. Estate sale operators are companies and so must charge sales tax. They have a good feel for what things are worth (usually less than the homeowner thinks), and they usually do a nice job of organizing the merchandise.
• Estate sales are generally held inside the house and in the back yard, so you get to see how other people live.
• And some of the other people live mighty high off the hog. Estate sales often take place in multimillion-dollar homes, sometimes owned by people who can afford to maintain several places and who, when selling a house, simply dispose of all the designer furnishings and redecorate the next place from scratch.
• Estate sales may take place in gated communities and HOAs where ordinary yard sales are not permitted.
• Nine times out of ten, the offerings at an estate sale are much, much nicer than anything you find at a yard sale. Often you’ll find expensive items that are barely used or even brand-new.
In addition to the Rabbit, which I use a couple of times a week, I’ve bought high-quality cutlery, a beautiful set of coveted Tonalaware, a matching red leather sofa and recliner for M’hijito’s house, a fun leather ottoman for my own place, a gorgeous custom-made library table, upscale cookbooks, and any number of tschotchkies, yard items, and household gadgets.
The trick to estate sales is finding out about them and then getting there before they open. An easy way to find an estate sale in your area is to go to Estatesales.net and subscribe. At the site, you can click on your state and then your city to find a list of nearby sales. It’s even easier to subscribe; this will elicit a weekly e-mail listing of upcoming events, and the e-mail generally tells you whether and where the estate-sale company has posted photos.
A listing with photos is especially useful, because you get a feel for whether a given sale has goods that may interest you, and you waste a lot less time than you do wandering from yard sale to yard sale.
Remember, though, that you will be competing with antique and second-hand dealers. This means you need to get there early! Be there a half-hour before the door opens, and be prepared to stand in line. If a sale is really hot, the organizers will let only 15 or 20 people in at a time, for safety and for the sake of maintaining order. The dealers are always there as dawn cracks, and they go straight to the best stuff.
It’s smart to bring a basket, box, or shopping bag, so you’re not having to balance things in one hand while you inspect the merchandise. Also, some people will bring their own tags marked with their name and SOLD. Usually you claim an item by removing the tag or picking it up and carrying it over to the cashier’s table, but not everyone knows an untagged item is considered “sold.”
Estate sales are a lot of fun, not only because you sometimes score a fantastic deal but because you get to see some amazing real estate, some interesting antiques, and some expensive designer furniture. La Maya even found her house in our neighborhood at an estate sale. She visited the estate sale, having found it in a weekly e-mail notice, and once inside she realized she loved the beautiful house. When she asked the estate-sale organizer if the owners were planning to sell, the answer was yes! Instantly she called her partner, who agreed that it was a perfect place for them, and before long they were living around the corner from me. Now there’s an estate-sale triumph!
